A week ago I saw one of these handsome ctenucha moths alight on my native holly. Today the light was just right to take a photograph of it on the native holly blossoms. These pollinators are the unsung heroes of our Thanksgiving harvest of red-orange holly berries along our roadsides. I do not care for its common name of "wasp moth" but it is a little surprising looking. My poem of last year bears out my impression that things are almost disconcertingly early this summer. I did see a fritillary this week, cicadas are singing and the first white aster is nodding in the shadows, so here we are. High summer. Make the most of it.

Wasp Moth Encounter With a wealth like coins the silver spangling of a fritillary’s underwing quite seduced me until I had sat still among the tall white asters long enough for a Zen abbot of a mothCtenucha Rōshi to rearrange its sooty silken robe collar bright above the dusky panels saffron surprise ink-black the eyes and probing sensitivities – not the emerald shoulders but the subtlety of restraint pale whisper lines on gray an August afternoon’s enlightenment while distantly cicada sang.